The Progress of the Research Drug Aducanumab for Alzheimer's Disease

Biogen has announced a revision of its research and marketing agreement with Neurimmune on the developing drug aducanumab for the treatment of Alzheimer's Disease (AD). According to the New Deal, Biogen will pay Neurimmune $150 million in one lump sum. If the drug is approved by the FDA in the future, the company will pay Neurimmune its royalty rate of 15%.

Aducanumab is a monoclonal antibody found by Neurimmune to target beta-amyloid, the company acquired the drug's development and marketing rights from Neurimmune in 2007. The action by the company shows the company's confidence in Aducanumab's successful listing.
AD is a neurodegenerative disease that leads to gradual damage and death of nerve cells in the brain, resulting in cognitive decline and other brain functions. There are 25 million AD patients in the world. A beta deposition in the brain is a typical feature of AD patients, and that's why many therapies target A beta, but so far, there has been no successful targeted treatments for A beta in clinical phase 3 trials. However, Biogen has confidence in Aducanumab.

Because it is a completely humanized monoclonal antibody that can be combined with A beta with high affinity. It would not be combined with A beta monomer, but would be combined with soluble A beta oligomers and insoluble A beta fibrils. It was discovered by Neurimmune from the B cell library of healthy older people. These older people, , have not shown a decline in cognitive abilities, or cognitive decline is slower than the average person.

In August, brain scanning showed that aducanumab significantly reduced the level of beta deposition in the brain of mild AD patients in the completed clinical phase 1b trials. The detection of cognitive ability of patients revealed that aducanumab could slow down the cognitive decline of mild AD patients. And the efficacy was linear in dose-dependent relationship with drug dosage. In 2015, the company launched two clinical phase 3 trials to detect the efficacy of aducanumab in a total of 2,700 mild AD patients. These two clinical phase 3 trials are still in progress.

Reference:
"Recent research progress in the field of panning | central nervous system disease" (phase 42), October 31, 2017